Coimbatore: Senior officials of Tamil Nadu and Kerala will meet at Thiruvananthapuram on June 13 to sort out the raging row over the plugging of the concealed pipeline used by Tamil Nadu to draw water from Siruvani dam. The Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage Board officials from Coimbatore who are scheduled to attend the meeting with the Kerala officials in Thiruvananthapuram will urge Kerala to stop plugging the pipeline that supplies water to Coimbatore in times of crisis, especially during summer.
“Kerala maintains that they are only carrying out maintenance work and not plugging the pipeline. They claim that it is part of their maintenance work where they would ensure that the valve in the pipeline is made functional so that it could be closed or opened whenever required”, a senior official said here. The water is drawn from the pipeline only if there is acute shortage and storage level in Siruvani dam hits dead storage like in 2013. “When the monsoon is copious the state does not require water from the this pipeline.”
The British-era pipeline has been used by Tamil Nadu for decades now but the existence of this was largely unknown until last year when the reservoir hit dead storage level. The water from this line was drawn to supply water to Coimbatore city. Kerala is supplying 1,300 million cubic feet (mcft) water every year to Tamil Nadu from Siruvani dam as per the water-sharing agreement. It is believed that the pipeline was part of an old water supply network that used to carry water to Coimbatore in the 1930s. The state ought to have closed the pipe when the new Siruvani dam was built in 1984.
